


Where Pavlov Stopped

by TW Lewis (gardendoor)



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-01-07
Updated: 2001-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 03:04:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardendoor/pseuds/TW%20Lewis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Jean's death as Dark Phoenix, Scott is left with an uncomfortable reminder of her attraction to Wolverine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Pavlov Stopped

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This story takes place after the Dark Phoenix Saga. If you’ve got problems with homosexuality and adult situations, read no further. Thanks goes to Luba Kmetyk for beta reading.

Jean was dead. He couldn’t quite grasp that. She’d survived ten kinds of hell fighting beside him. She’d survived deadly radiation and a plane crash. And now she was gone. Disintegrated on the moon.

There wasn’t even a body to bury.

He stayed in their room, his room now, and stared out the window. He needed to start leading the team again, to throw himself into his work. That had always been his way of coping, to prove he wasn’t helpless by taking control and acting strong until pretense became reality. But he couldn’t leave the room.

The newer X-Men wisely left him alone. But the old vanguard, Bobby, Warren, and Hank, all took time off from their lives and camped out at the mansion, trying to coax Slim Summers out of his shell. After ten years he thought they’d know better than that. He’d never really talked about his feelings with them; why did they think he wanted to talk now? And anything other than talking was out of the question. He couldn’t go on a trip with them, or go to the movies, or play football, or work out in the Danger Room. That all involved leaving this room.

The Professor had been brushing the corners of his mind for the last two weeks, hoping to heal Scott’s wounded soul as he had when Scott was a child. Scott wanted so badly to let him in, to let the Professor help him. But it was taking all of Scott’s energy to close his mind off and keep the Professor from seeing what he was afraid of. He couldn’t let the Professor in without revealing the truth.

Finally the Professor came to his room. Bobby was on Scott-duty: making weak jokes and trying to avoid any mention of Jean’s death. He went silent when the Professor entered.

“Bobby, could you give us a moment, please?” asked the Professor. When Bobby fled the room, the Professor brought his chair closer to Scott. “I know I’ve said it before, but I’m so sorry for your loss, Scott. I know how much she meant to you. We all loved her so much.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Sir.”

The Professor sat silently for a long moment. Scott knew from long experience that it wasn’t a pause to collect his thoughts; it was a tactic to unbalance Scott when he finally spoke again. “I always thought the two of you made the perfect couple. Jean was so strong, a survivor. The fact that she was an X-Man, able to take care of herself, made her intensely attractive to you. You thought you couldn’t lose her the way you lost your parents.” He added softly, “And her enthusiasm for life counterbalanced your natural isolation. Now you need to bridge that gap on your own.”

 _But that’s only what I got from her,_ Scott thought to himself, _He’s keeping it one-sided, because what she got from my stability was the freedom to be wild, knowing I would be her anchor. He doesn’t want me to think that it was my fault she turned into Dark Phoenix. But I should have known! I should have sensed something was wrong; should have called her on her lapses. I’ve known her for ten years! I should have done better!_ He realized he was leaking his thoughts a little and strengthened his shields, but the thoughts came unbidden. _And she loved making constrained men lose all control--_

That thought snapped him back to reality. “I said I don’t want to talk, Professor. Please leave me alone.”

The Professor opened his mouth to speak.

“No. And tell Bobby and the others to stay out.”

He waited until the Professor wheeled out of the room, until the pressure of concern eased from his mental barriers. Only then did he dare to breathe, dare to think.

Long before she’d opened a psychic rapport with him on their last visit to Warren’s home in New Mexico, Jean had always kept a light connection between Scott and herself. That bond went back to the earliest days of their romance, when the two eager, clumsy teenagers had been willing to try anything to prove their love and grow closer. He sensed when she was hurt, when she was angry, when she was happy. It always gave him a special thrill to feel her heart race whenever he walked in the room. He loved creating that reaction in her, loved knowing exactly how she felt about him.

Until Wolverine joined the team.

From the first time she saw him, Jean had been attracted to Wolverine. Scott had been understandably furious until she pointed out that she couldn’t control it, wasn’t acting on it, and that Scott himself could feel that the depth and magnitude of her feelings for him far outweighed the relatively minor arousal she felt when Wolverine toweled himself dry after a workout or leaned back in a chair with that confident smile of his.  


  
But an unfortunate side effect of the bond Jean and Scott shared was that one’s thoughts and feelings tended to trigger the other’s. Jean would watch Wolverine, feel that rush of arousal, and Scott couldn’t help but get turned on, too. Or worse yet, Scott would be with Wolverine, and Jean, catching a whiff of Wolverine in Scott’s thoughts, would become aroused and kick those sensations back to Scott. In time, the lines blurred.

How long did it take to learn a new behavior? With Jean gone, would the sight of Wolverine turn Scott on out of habit? When Jean was alive, it had just been embarrassing; a small price to pay for the bond he and Jean shared. With her gone, it would be obscene, a mocking reminder of Jean’s darker, secret passions, the ones that had given birth to Dark Phoenix.

Once he walked out this door, he would have no choice but to face Wolverine. Scott wanted to avoid that confrontation and the answers it would bring for as long as he could.

*****

“--And I would like to remind you all to be quiet and leave Scott in peace,” said Professor X.

Logan glowered. He didn’t take orders from Chuckles. Baldie treated him like one of these amateurs, like a flaming kid who was supposed to be heartbroken over a few demerits in the Danger Room. Chuckles formed the team and then abandoned them, and now that he was back he expected them all to kowtow and treat him like God. Scott was the leader now; he’d _earned_ Logan’s respect -- no mean feat -- and Logan wasn’t just going to let Scott wallow in pain and let Chuckles tear apart everything Scott had worked hard to make his own.

He had to admit, a lot of his anger at Xavier was really anger at himself. He’d let Jean die. He was as much at fault here as he had been when Sabertooth killed Silver Fox. He didn’t remember much of that time, just that image of Sabertooth standing over her naked, bloody body, licking his fingers. Jean’s death brought back all that pain. He wanted to howl and scream at the sky like an animal, let the beast take over as he hadn’t since Mac and Heather Hudson had tamed him.

He knew how Scott was feeling, and not just from memory or from his own feelings at Jean’s death. Scott had spent the last two weeks in a closed room, unwashed, unshaved, unmoving. His scent built up, pungent and thick, released down the hallway every time the Professor or one of the original X-Men paid him a call. That odor of grief and fear and hate was going to drive Logan rabid if he had to smell it for another day.

Logan went upstairs and marched down the hall to Scott’s room. When he opened the door the scent assaulted his heightened senses like a sandstorm. Grief. Fear. Hate. And something else, something Logan had grown accustomed to tuning out. Arousal. Over time he’d forced the alpha male in himself to stand down, give Scott authority over him as he’d given the Hudsons authority, and to ignore the scent of male desire that made him want to challenge Scott.

Scott was sitting on his unmade bed in his undershirt and briefs, his face a haggard, stubbled wreck. He was wearing his backup goggles. Not his glasses, his backup goggles, with the strap to keep them from falling off. This wasn’t good.

“Get out of here, Wolverine!” Scott snarled.

“Not until I’ve had my say.”

“No. Now.” said Scott. “Get out.”

“You look like hell,” said Logan. “I guarantee, if you shower and shave, you won’t want to die so badly.” He grabbed Scott and started hauling him towards the suite’s bathroom. Scott fought him as hard as he could, but the man had barely eaten, drunk, or moved for two weeks. It wasn’t much of a contest. And since Scott’s goggles were an all-or-nothing deal with no control dial, Scott couldn’t use his optic blasts to push Logan back unless he wanted to blast him full power.

Logan held him under the shower, soaking Scott’s clothed body, and forcibly started to scrub him. “Damn it, Summers, if you don’t start doing this yourself, I’m going to use my claws to shave you.”

That got him. With a hateful stare at Logan, Scott started washing himself. “Is there some reason you’re still here watching me?” asked Scott icily, turning to shield his growing erection from view, “Or can I have some privacy?”

Logan left him in the shower and went back to the bedroom. There he changed the sheets, cleaned the room, and opened the window, erasing the stale scent of two weeks of endless grieving. The cool breeze soothed him greatly. He could hear Scott brushing his teeth in the bathroom, hear him breathe more deeply and evenly than he had since Jean died. The worst of the wallowing should be over now, as long as Logan could get Scott to open up in some way and let the grief out before it could build again.

*****

Scott had showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, washed his hair, cleaned his nails, and Wolverine was still waiting for him in his room! Didn’t he understand that Scott wanted him to leave? He couldn’t dawdle in the bathroom any longer, but he couldn’t just walk out with a towel around his waist and pray that Wolverine didn’t notice his aching erection.

“What are you still doing out there?” he called.

“Haven’t had my say yet, bub. Not leaving until I do.”  


  
Scott clenched his fist on the bathroom counter, but there was nothing he could do about it. He wrapped the towel around himself and yanked the bathroom door open. “So you’re going to stand there while I get dressed? Get out, Wolverine, we’ll talk some other time.”

*****

If Logan left now, Scott would throw up his defenses again, stronger than before. It might be months before he left this room and dealt with the loss of Jean, if ever. “We’ll talk now, Summers. I’m not leaving until we do.” He eyed Scott’s towel-wrapped crotch for a deliberate half-second. “That doesn’t bother me any more than usual.”

Logan had braced himself for the deeper arousal that statement would create in Scott. They needed to talk, and if facing Scott’s attraction to him was the only way to get that done, then Logan would do it. He wasn’t prepared for the rage and self-hatred that clenched Scott’s whole body, or the choked sob that died in Scott’s throat. What was going on here? “Summers?”

“It’s. Not. Me.” Scott managed. His head was turned away.

“You’re only gonna make things harder on yourself if you can’t own up to your feelings,” said Logan.

“They’re not my feelings, dammit! Or they weren’t,” he added softly.

Things were starting to make a little more sense. “Red made you feel what she felt for me?” he asked.

“She didn’t mean to. But I don’t know what this is now. That’s why I’ve been in here, I’ve been afraid to find out if I still…” He broke off. “She’s gone; I shouldn’t still be feeling this way. The Professor would probably call it a learned response.” He laughed brokenly.

Logan jerked his chin at the dresser. “Get some clothes on. Then we’ll talk.” Scott complied, pulling off the towel and fumbling through his drawers for clothes. Logan leaned against the wall and watched him. Scientists had turned Logan into an animal, a very paranoid animal. He hated the thought of being controlled or used in any way, and had automatically bristled when he first smelled Scott’s attraction for him. He’d waited for Scott to try and use him, the way everyone with authority over him, except Mac, had always tried to use him. He’d tensed himself against an attack that never came, and even later, when he’d grown to trust and rely on Scott, he’d never trusted him fully. But now that it was out in the open, no longer a dark secret waiting to rear its head, he could get off the defensive and start figuring out what to do.

Now that Wolverine understood what had driven Scott into hiding, he was less concerned about forcing Scott to unburden himself further. He’d taken the first step; the rest would follow in its own time.

Scott had a nice back. Everyone made jokes, called him ‘Slim’, but his consciousness of his wiry frame and of his position as leader made Scott an exercise fanatic. The slight movements as he slipped his briefs up his thighs and over his ass made the muscles in his back and shoulders slide beneath the skin like perfect medical diagrams, every muscle distinct.

When Mac had tamed Logan, he became alpha male to Logan's beta, and the instincts within Logan had shifted from paranoid defensiveness to loyalty and attraction. But Logan had never acted on his attraction to Mac. He’d known that Mac didn’t feel that way about him and he’d been terrified of losing what he had with Mac and Heather: his only refuge, his only hope of control, of humanity. Now that he knew how Scott really felt, knew Scott wasn’t going to try to hurt him, Logan once again found himself letting go of that last bastion of mistrust inside him, wanting Scott in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to feel before. He wanted to let go, to give in to his baser instincts in a way that a woman could at best survive, never enjoy.

But Scott thought of his own hungers as alien to him, something forced on him by Jean. If Logan tried something, would Scott recoil? Was it even right to explore this so soon after Jean’s burial?

Scott buttoned his shirt and buckled his pants, then turned around. It was strange: Scott’s idea of casual clothes had always been formal, but with the Professor in residence he’d traded in his black turtleneck and gray tweed jacket for a blue Oxford shirt and khaki pants. A perfect model of the Professor.

*****

Scott could feel Wolverine’s eyes on him as he dressed. He imagined he could feel the other man’s warm breath on his back, though they were on opposite sides of the room. He tucked himself in in such a way as to hide his erection and buckled his pants.

When he turned around, Wolverine looked calm, completely non-judgmental. “I don’t remember much of my past,” said Wolverine, “But I remember a woman I loved, and how helpless and angry and sick I felt when she died. Don’t let it eat you, Summers.” With that, Wolverine walked out of the room.

Scott felt unbalanced, but he managed to call out, “Wolverine?”

The Canadian paused in the doorway.

“Thanks.”

Wolverine nodded and left.

Scott sat down on the bed. He had to admit that, showered, dressed and with a cool breeze on his back, he felt a lot more human than he had for weeks. He still felt the same passion towards Wolverine, and it made him furious to think that all he had left of Jean was her passion for another man. But he had his answers. More importantly, he didn’t have to be afraid of Wolverine finding out. He’d never talked about this with Jean or anyone else. For the first time, it wasn’t a secret anymore.

*****

Over the course of the next week, things slowly returned to normal. Scott left his room, bade farewell to Bobby, Hank and Warren, started training the newest recruit -- Kitty Pryde, who tied with Bobby for the title of youngest X-Man ever -- and got back to butting heads with Professor Xavier over how best to run the team. The Professor refused to understand that, while his methods had worked on the original teenaged X-Men, they were hardly appropriate for the now adult team, whom Scott had figured out his own methods for dealing with.

The Professor was never one to back down from an argument. Instead, he changed the game by focusing his attention on Kitty Pryde. His earlier methods should have been perfect for the thirteen-year-old mutant, but as a child prodigy Kitty was used to being treated like an adult. The Professor had her respect and attention now, while she was still overwhelmed by the abrupt changes in her life, but Scott had a feeling that inside of a month she would listen to the Professor about as little as Wolverine listened to Scott. At least she’d accepted Ororo as a surrogate mother, so hopefully she’d take orders from at least one sensible adult.

The hardest part of the past week, though, had been the little changes. No chatting with Jean as they prepared the Professor’s breakfast together. No warm, lithe body curled up against him at night. No smirk or chuckle in his mind at every stray thought. No powerful redhead backing him in battle. None of the other X-Men had suffered a loss like this before. Ororo, like Scott, had lost her parents young, but even she had never lost a spouse, a life-mate. No one could tell him how to get through the days or the nights except Wolverine. And Scott avoided getting into any deep conversations with Wolverine, afraid the Professor might pick up on his thoughts, or that one of the team members would notice if the two men suddenly started spending a lot of time together. But one morning as Scott prepared the Professor’s breakfast, Wolverine came inside, mopping his sweat with a towel. “You’re up early,” said Scott.

“Always am. I do katas down by the lake.” He helped himself to coffee and left the room. It was only later, as he brought the Professor’s tray up the stairs, that Scott realized the comment had been meant as an invitation.

*****

Dawn was the best time of day around here, in Logan’s opinion. A few hours of peace and quiet before everyone woke up and got in everyone else’s business. He started with Crane forms: swooping, balanced palm strikes and locks; then moved to Dragon: more conservative, more vicious; then Snake: mostly deadly kicks and ground-fighting, and ended with Tiger: a mixture of locking and gathering an opponent’s limbs inward, then exploding out with claws flashing.

Scott showed up in the middle of Logan’s workout, and Logan stopped to watch him. He had dressed in dark sweats, clothes that didn’t reek of Xavier’s style but which Scott clearly intended to change out of later. Interesting compromise. “I was wondering if you would come.”

Scott sat down with his back to a slender willow. “What was her name?”

“Silver Fox. We had a little cabin out in the woods. I’d thought we could just stay there forever and forget about the world.”

“What happened to her?”

“Someone raped and killed her. Waited in our house for me to come home. I don’t remember much after that.”

“That’s something we have in common,” said Scott. “I don’t remember much of my past, either. I don’t really remember my parents or my childhood. And the parts I do remember, like the orphanage, I wish I could forget.”

“You won’t forget her,” said Logan. “It’ll stop hurting every second of every day, is all.” He crouched beside Scott. What would his mouth taste like? Scott looked up then, and Logan could see raw pain hidden behind those red glasses. The pain slowly shifted to curiosity and hunger, and when Logan leaned in to kiss him, Scott met him in a fierce rush.

Scott’s mouth was mint-tinged and responded eagerly to the kiss, his tongue fighting Logan’s for supremacy. Logan tried to push Scott up against a tree, but Scott shifted his shoulders and wrestled Logan to the ground, fighting to stay on top. Wasted effort against Logan’s bigger muscles and greater mass.

After a long moment of this, Scott pulled away. “I have to get back to the house. The Professor will be waking up soon.”

“Gotta get our pants back up before the parents come home, is that it?” said Logan. “You’re old to be sneaking around.”

“He was gone for most of the time I’ve known you. He doesn’t understand the context, doesn’t know about Jean’s attraction to you and the compromises we made, and frankly, I wouldn’t be any more comfortable if he had known all along.”

Logan rubbed the fabric of Scott’s sleeve between two fingers. “You’re gonna run yourself ragged trying to hide from him. Be easier just to have it out with him. He ain’t God and he ain’t infallible.”

“I know that!”

“Don’t think you do, Summers, not really.”

“Damn it, Wolverine, I know he’s not perfect, but he’s the closest thing I have to a father! He’s the first person who ever thought I was worth anything! I can’t just turn my back on that, on him, and say it doesn’t matter if I lose his respect.” He stood up, brushed the dirt off his sweat pants. “I have to go. I’ll see you later, all right?”

*****

Scott hurried back up to the house, his hand absently brushing his lips. What the hell had he just done? Jean wasn’t even cold yet, so to speak, and he was kissing _Wolverine_ of all people?

Wolverine’s mouth had been spicy-sweet, rough lips and fierce tongue, unlike anything Scott had ever experienced. It just felt right, like an awful pressure released from inside his chest. All the feelings he’d tried to push down for years refused to be ignored any more. And the powerlessness, the helplessness he’d felt ever since Jean died on the moon, had vanished when he’d fought Wolverine in the space of that kiss. The grief wasn’t gone, but it had lessened somewhat.

But Scott couldn’t help remembering Wolverine’s jibes when he changed from his exercise sweats to clothes the Professor would approve of.

Professor Xavier was reading when Scott brought up his breakfast and the morning paper.

“Good morning, Professor, did you sleep well?”

“For the most part. Moira MacTaggert called early in the morning and woke me, though.”

Scott’s heart skipped a beat. Had Xavier seen him leave the house? “Oh? When?”

“Two-thirty, I suppose. Are you all right, Scott? You look pale.”

“I’m fine, Sir. What was the call about?”

“She wanted to give me a copy of her last medical analysis of Jean. I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I had realized it would upset you this deeply. You seemed so cheerful when you came in here; I didn’t intend to spoil your mood.”

“It’s all right, Professor. I have to face the fact that she’s gone if I want to put it behind me.” Scott squirmed slightly as the Professor frowned, clearly sensing a discrepancy between Scott’s words and his thoughts. “Considering the Danger Room disaster we had with Kitty Pryde yesterday, Sir, I was thinking that a better test of her abilities might be a combination of an obstacle course and a game of tag with Nightcrawler. Then she’d have to keep switching between solid and phased states, instead of waltzing through the scenario with her eyes shut. She’d have to turn solid to tag him, but take care not to solidify in midair or inside a solid hologram, and he’d have to work on his precision teleportation and his acrobatics.”

“I don’t think Kitty’s ready for a one-on-one scenario just yet,” said the Professor. “We need to discover how long she can remain phased for, and how much solid matter she can take along with her. More importantly, she needs to grow accustomed to the Danger Room and our modus operendi at this school. We can’t just throw her into the deep end and hope she’ll swim. She’s a few months younger than Bobby was when he came here, and you remember how many problems he had. We pushed him too hard, and he’s responded to the pressure by fleeing, becoming an accountant of all things. I won’t lose another X-Man through haste.”

Scott’s jaw tightened. “Sir, don’t hold Kitty back just because you’re afraid she’ll end up like Jean.”

“I’m going to disregard your impertinence--”

“Impertinence? I’m a grown man, Sir, and I’ve been leading this team as many years as you’ve been teaching mutants. More, if we subtract the time you were away. I know the X-Men, I know what they need, and you keep--”

“Scott, I understand that you’re still in mourning. You’re lashing out. But my patience has limits, and you’re reaching them. If you keep this up, I’m going to have to give you demerits.”  


  
“Demerits?” Scott laughed hollowly. “I’m twenty-six years old. In the time I’ve been at this school, I’ve fought mutants, demons, aliens, and gods. I’ve nearly died. I just lost the only woman I ever loved. And I’m supposed to be afraid you’ll ground me? That’s your problem: you think Storm, a woman who’s been worshipped as a goddess, and Wolverine, a man who can’t even remember how long he’s been a secret agent and mercenary, should be treated the same as naive teenagers like Nightcrawler and Colossus! We’re adults, competent adults, and you’re destroying this team by treating us otherwise!”

Xavier arched one elegant brow. “Are you finished?”

Scott gritted his teeth. “Yes, Sir.”

“Good. This is precisely why I’ve gone back to my old methods. This new team lacks discipline. Each X-Man is treated differently; there is no structure, no universal rules, no standard checks of skill and mental stability. It’s too easy for someone to fall through the cracks. People get depressed, angry, or mentally unbalanced and there’s no yardstick or daily examination to catch the budding problem. People think they know best in a fight, disobey orders--”

“I’d call it using their initiative.”

“--Whatever you choose to call it, it means they’re not where they’re supposed to be, and that causes miscommunications in combat, failed orders, deaths by friendly fire. That was the first lesson I learned in war. A commander needs disciplined, obedient soldiers who will obey his every order like parts of a well-oiled machine. I’m trying to make your job easier for you.”

“I don’t need you to make my job easier, Sir. I need you to let me _do_ my job.”

“May I remind you, Scott, I may have assigned you as field commander, but this is still my team and my school. This is my life’s work. You don’t give the orders around here; I do. We can’t work at cross-purposes; it will destroy the team, and mine is the deciding vote. If you feel you can’t collaborate with me, I can always assign someone else as team leader, but I’d rather not do that. I don’t want one argument to destroy a good working relationship that has lasted ten years.”

*****

The next morning, Logan slipped out of the mansion and through the woods, stopping short before he reached the lake. Scott was already there, and agitated, by the smell of it. Wolverine crept up behind the younger man. Scott was dressed in those damn sweats again. “Mornin’ Summers.”

Scott jumped half a mile, his hand instinctively snapping to his glasses before he realized who had startled him. “I could have blown your head off, Wolverine; you know better than to sneak up on another X-Man like that.”

Wolverine smirked and leaned against a tree. “You should’ve seen yourself jump.” Then, more seriously, “We making a habit of this? Sneaking around every morning before the others wake up?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re doing. But I’m certainly not going to risk letting the others find out what’s going on before we know where we stand.”

“If you want to keep them from finding out, there’s better ways than hiding in plain sight. Ororo swims here some mornings, and the Ruskie comes out here to reminisce about his beloved Siberia. And we don’t even know what the Pryde kid’s patterns are. You want to be covert, then you go visit your grandparents in Alaska, I leave a week later for business in Canada or Japan, and neither of us show up where we’re supposed to. Couple of weeks, maybe a month, we should have some idea where we’re going, and then we decide what to do and come home.”

“We can’t just leave now,” said Scott. “Alex and Lorna are gone, Jamie Madrox, Sean Cassidy … if we leave now, the X-Men will be down to Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus and Sprite, and we haven’t finished putting her through her paces in the Danger Room yet, let alone dropped her into real combat situations.”

“The kid handled herself well enough when we showed up on her doorstep with the Hellfire Club on our heels. She helped us escape, didn’t lose her cool. I even saw her show some good tactical thinking at one point, spur of the moment, by leading the goons into a dead end far from the doors and phasing through the floor. She’ll do okay.”

“We’ve never had so few X-Men. Even the original X-Men had five members. I’m worried that if we stretch them so thin, they’ll be massacred.”

“All right, we can keep doing this for a while,” said Logan. “But by the end of the month, we either take time off, tell the others, or call it quits. I don’t want to live my life sneaking around and lying to the people I’m supposed to trust and work with.” It went deeper than that. Much as he fought against caring about anyone, needing anyone, the X-Men had slowly become his family. He didn’t want to destroy that by lying to them any more than Scott wanted to destroy it by telling them the truth.

Scott stared out at the reflection of rosy sunrise clouds on the water. “Have you done this before?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t think so. When we kissed yesterday … in the wild, if a male senses another male in heat, it makes them fight each other. The animal in me wanted to fight you, to stay in control of the situation. But the man in me wanted it. Wanted you.”

Scott kept looking out at the water, avoiding Wolverine’s eyes. “I keep telling myself that this isn’t me, it’s just Jean, but it’s not. It’s taking on a life of its own. I don’t know what to do.”

Logan stepped behind Scott and put his arms around him, as he would have done with a troubled female lover. The difference in height meant that Logan’s face rested between Scott’s shoulder blades, and the two men relaxed and leaned into each other as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Their breathing matched, each inhaling and exhaling as the other did. Scott had such a clean, orderly scent: always freshly showered, the same toothpaste, aftershave, and antiperspirant every day, and an underlying ‘Scott Summers’ smell like cedar. As Logan’s fingers began tracing patterns on the waistband of Scott’s pants, the clean, cedar scent grew warmer, stronger, and his breathing quickened slightly.

“I hate these workout clothes,” said Logan, “I can’t see the shape of your body at all.”

Feverishly, Scott pulled off his sweatshirt and scrambled out of his sweatpants and briefs. His shaft was longer and thinner than Logan’s, and nearly purple with excitement. Logan paused for a moment, admiring Scott’s slender, well-muscled body as it trembled with the tension of the moment.

There were times when Logan wondered about the parts of his life that he couldn’t remember. Times when his feet knew every street of a city he’d never been to. Times when his sense of smell told him “jasmine” or “napalm” and he had no idea how he knew what jasmine or napalm smelled like in the first place.

Now he knew that running fingernails up Scott’s inner thigh would make him gasp and writhe as no woman would. Knew exactly how hard to bite Scott’s nipple. Knew a kiss just below the floating ribs would harden his lover more than a kiss on the chest. Knew a soft touch just behind Scott’s sac would cause an almost nuclear response. Somewhere, somewhen, Logan must have loved a man who taught him all these things, then vanished without a trace into Logan’s shattered mind. Terrifying.

Scott, not privy to Logan’s private thoughts, was willing and eager to give as good as he’d got even if he was a little unsure how best to proceed. His kisses traced Logan’s chest and belly, but suddenly he started laughing and couldn’t stop, dissolving into hysterics.

“Take it easy, Slim! What’s so funny?”

“It-it’s like kissing an angora sweater!”

Logan smacked him. “Watch it, bub. ‘Sides, you got hair too.”

“Yeah, I’ve just never thought of it from the girl’s perspective.” He suddenly looked scared. “Wolverine, I don’t think I’m ready for, you know.”

“It’s okay, Scott. I got you off without takin’ one up the back staircase; you don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for.”

Scott nodded and closed his fist around Logan’s ruddy, hardening cock. But instead of pumping up and down as Logan expected he would, Scott bent and took it in his mouth.

Logan could remember receiving more than a hundred professional-level blow-jobs, but there was something unnervingly erotic about an enthusiastic beginner who was as likely to cause pain as pleasure. Scott suckled him with enthusiasm, and though he couldn’t take more than the head into his mouth, and though his teeth did threaten Logan’s nerves more than once, he licked and kissed and sucked with such tender intensity that Logan’s last conscious thought was an understanding of what Jean had loved about the meticulous, intense team leader. Logan thought he could love it too. Then the animal in him took over, obliterating conscious thought.

When he came back to himself, he saw Scott grinning self-consciously and trying to wipe semen off his chin with a maple leaf.  


  
“I thought I did pretty well, for a beginner,” said Scott.

“Don’t get cocky.”  


  
“Too late for that.”

Logan smirked. “The fearless leader makes a joke. And I thought I’d seen everything.”

Scott ran a hand though his hair, then looked anxiously back at the house. “We’d better get back before anyone wonders where we are.”

“Damn it, Scott, we need to figure out if this is worth telling the team or if we should just forget the whole thing. We’re not going to find that out here.”

Scott nodded. “I can go up to visit my grandparents in Alaska. Meet me there in a couple of days. Just the two of us, alone in the middle of nowhere. Let’s see if we kill each other.”

*****

Logan walked down the runway and adjusted the strap of his duffel across his back. He hadn’t asked Scott for directions. He didn’t need them. He sniffed the air for Scott’s scent and--

Jean.

Logan bent to the ground and took another whiff, his stomach in knots. No. Not Jean. But close enough to be her twin. And Scott was with her. Logan followed the scent through town to a little inn. Most of the lights were off, almost everyone was asleep or gone, but there was still a fire burning in the fireplace of one of the upstairs bedrooms. And silhouetted against the light was a figure Logan never thought to see alive again. She responded to something Scott said, and the voice was as perfect a match as the body and scent. A deep cover agent of some sort?

Logan unsheathed his claws, waiting for more clues. The not-Jean went deeper into the room and the air was suddenly suffused with the sounds and smells of sex. Logan was surprised at how much it hurt.

He waited for hours before the lights went out and Scott came out on the balcony to think. Logan used his claws to climb the wall and stood in the corner of the balcony, armed folded, rage making steam rise off his stocky form.

Scott had the decency to look away. “I know what you’re thinking, Wolverine, but she’s not Jean. Her name is Madeline Pryor. She’s a pilot; she works for my grandparents. I just…” His eyes went distant. “I love her. I only just met her and I love her.”

“You’re damn right she ain’t Jean. She’s a deep cover agent,” said Logan. “Any idiot can see she was made up to look like Jean to get through your defenses.”

“She’s not. She couldn’t be. She’s been working for my grandparents for a couple of years now; I only found out I _had_ grandparents a few months ago. No one could have known about them, no one could have planted her here.”

Logan felt sick. The beast in him was frenzied, screaming. “You’re just pretending you’re in love with her so you won’t have to deal with us. So you won’t have to risk finding something in yourself that Baldie won’t approve of. She’s not Jean. Jean’s not coming back.”

“I know that!” Scott looked backward into the darkened room and lowered his voice. “She’s not Jean. If you talk to her for five minutes, that much is clear. But she’s amazing. I told her I was a mutant, I told her about Jean, and she didn’t even bat an eyelash.” He paused. “What happened between us was a mistake. You know that as well as I do. It was just the ghost of her telepathy, muddling our feelings. I’ve got a chance for something real here. I’m not going to throw it away.” He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s late, Wolverine. Look, come by in the morning and I’ll introduce you.”

“No thanks, bub. Three’s a crowd.” Logan vaulted over the guard rail and landed in the snow below. He stalked back to the airport without looking back. Something ached inside and wouldn’t go away. He prayed for his shattered mind to swallow the memories of loving Scott, but they were burned into his brain now.

It was going to be a long way home.

End.


End file.
